Short Change

Pulled into Atlanta at around 5PM. Dinner at Miller Union. Farm egg baked in celery cream with rustic toast, pork and peanut terrine with fig and bacon, and chocolate bread pudding with rum sauce and crème fraîche. Also a cocktail. The place is located a literal stone's throw from where I once lived. I could honestly stick my head out a window and see the loft apartments Jayne and I called home directly across the street. I drove around Atlanta for a while. Never really noticed what a beautiful city it is. People everywhere. 52 degrees, so bundled up just enough. Omnipresent holiday lights providing a cheerful glow. Restaurants and bars and stores and theaters. There's a new black box theater directly behind my old apartment. Just part of the monumental change that's taken hold in that neighborhood. It's no longer "up-and-coming," as it was once pitched to us. It's now very much arrived. I thought. Thought a lot. I still wonder sometimes what would have happened had I not taken the job in New York. If my wife and I had stayed in Atlanta. In our lovely loft. With our dog. And my good job. Would we still be together? Would things have been different? Is there a parallel universe in which we never left? Never drifted apart? Never broke up? Could I walk up the stairs in my old building, find a key, put it in a lock and walk into my old life? Would she be there? The person I once thought I knew. I miss that person sometimes. But she never actually existed. So if she was a phantom anyway, why can't she still be there? Up there. In that apartment. Waiting. The future I imagined for myself ready to be unlocked and lived, exactly as I'd hoped. But I know that's not possible. The past is meaningless. There's no going back. There are no do-overs. There's only here. Now. This. And forward. I leave in the morning.

Stats:

Stopped in Atlanta for the night. 532 miles total. End of Day 1.

Most Recently on the Playlist:

Death Cab for Cutie -- Passengers Seat

Elliott Smith -- Twilight

Liz Longley -- Little White House